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BenEnglishAtHome writes "Nearly all US government employees and contractors are subject to
mandatory annual information security briefings. This year the official briefing flatly states that
all downloaded music is stolen. The occasionally breathless tone of the briefing and the various minor errors contained therein are funny but the real eye-opener is a 'secure the building' exercise where employees stumble across security problems and resolve them. According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download. If this were a single agency or department that had made a mistake in their training material it might not be so shocking. But this is a government-wide training package that's being absorbed by hundreds of thousands of federal employees, both civilian and military. If you see a co-worker downloading music, they're stealing. Period. Who woulda thunk it? Somebody should mirror this. Who wants to bet that copies will become hard to find if clued-in technogeeks take notice and start making noise?" Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."

They have a non-flash site [disa.mil] if you need to complete this training and receive your certificate and you can't have flash. Not sure how they are running the audio but that's available as well.

I gotta admit it's not as entertaining as the zoom down into the city flash animation when instead of that you get:

Screen 1 of 48. Screen title, Intro. A block in any city, U S A. The camera zooms into a bank A T M. The A T M screen reads, no funds available. The camera zooms into another A T M, and again, no funds are available. Cut to an office in a building. Camera zooms into computer screen on desk. C N N website is on screen, displaying news headlines that support audio. Camera zooms to P D A on desk. P D A displays news headlines that support audio. Camera zooms to fax machine. Document on machine displays news headlines that support audio.

Also, you might encounter some problems with words and acronyms that are pronounced like IA (Information Assurance)

Screen 4 of 48. Screen title, What is I Ay? Image of worker at desk with computer. The computer monitor displays a warning...

Every stream of bits can be interpreted as audio, so technically, if you're using the internet, you're "downloading music". Not to mention how many times your computer copies it around.

Someone been reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?

Because he was too tired to think particularly constructively tonight he savagely selected and copied a whole swathe of figures from the spreadsheet at random, pasted them into his own conversion program, which scaled and filtered and manipulated the figures according to his own experimental algorithms, loaded the converted file into Performer, a powerful sequencer program, and played the result through random MIDI channels to whichever synthesize

Just to point out, this isn't a "Flash-heavy" site, this is an online training course (CBT = computer-based training). The vast majority of CBT courses are done in Flash, for a variety of reasons (animation and audio are two). The company I work for creates CBT courses, including for the military. The LMS they run on disa.mil is the Meridian LMS I believe, we have several of our own courses sitting on their LMS. None of them are publicly-available though, I'm not sure why this course is.

You're basically saying 'it's not flash heavy' and then going on to state why it uses flash. If it uses flash heavily, that's flash heavy - that they have a reason for it being flash heavy is basically irrelevant.

I was asked to 'install' one not so long back. It was for a National Grid Electrical Safety Rules. There were 100 questions and a printable certificate at the end.

On my third attempt, I got 96%. Higher than all the proper electrical engineers around here (I'm a keyboard monkey). My certificate is pinned to the wall. I am qualified. Really, I am, the computer told me so.

It specifically excludes music you've purchased from being listed as illegal in the explanation if you pick the choice it doesn't want you to pick. The only thing I see wrong with their explanation is that it excludes legitimately "free" music such as stuff released into the public domain or under something like a Creative Commons license, but for the most part their definition is perfectly acceptable to the target audience (non-technical DoD users).

Some people might not be bright enough to distinguish from actual downloadingof some sort and streaming from some site like Hulu or Pandora. How does Pandoraor radio streams fit into this particular bit of government propaganda?

Some people might not be bright enough to distinguish from actual downloadingof some sort and streaming from some site like Hulu or Pandora. How does Pandoraor radio streams fit into this particular bit of government propaganda?

Both are blocked outright on DoD networks, along with all other mainstream music/video distribution sites, so no worries.

A drop in the bucket or not, somebody is still going to get harrased/sued/imprissoned for downloading something completely legit just because some dumbass in the government doesn't understand the law they are writting about!

Agreed. Such "free" music is just a drop in the bucket to the illegal downloads going on.

That's not going to stop Jamendo [jamendo.com] (just for example) from being pretty peeved about this. Actually, I'd go out on a limb and say that this constitutes a fairly decent basis for Jamendo suing the U.S. Federal Government. If the company line is: you can download for-pay music on government computers, but you can't use Jamendo... then there is a very serious problem, here.

...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not. Granted, I do wish that they would convey correct information, and I don't expect government workers to go zombie-like through the day without taking a break now and then, but still, I am glad that rampant goofing off in this particular manner is discouraged.

To be perfectly honest, the fact that most of them are employed is stealing my tax dollars. It seems that government offices are quite fond of creating messes to create more jobs which just sap productivity and money. But such is the way if you don't ever need to make a profit and just keep leaching off of the masses....

If _any_ government employee makes a mistake, all opposition politicians and media outlets might bitch about it for months (depending on who got fucked). So it's natural that a bureucracy evolves and more workers are needed because 60% of time is spent on asscovering.

If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...of company time.

Many government offices have sane guidelines that include that the allowance of a strictly limited amount of personal use is permissible: e.g. occasional personal internet use. A (legal) song or two would easily fit under these guidelines. (whether you're allowed to have the software to play it on a work machine is another matter). It strikes me that this is a sane policy for any company.

If the summary is accurate, whoever wrote this needs an encounter with a clue-by-four. Let's not even bother with stuff like Creative Commons licenses or public domain recordings - just take the briefing at face value for a minute. All music is copyrighted; downloading copyrighted material is stealing; therefore, downloading music is stealing.

Do they also not realize that in every Berne signatory country, all "creative" written text (i.e. anything other than raw facts), drawings, and photographs are also automatically copyrighted? So, using that logic, downloading any text or images is stealing. Congratulations, you've just made the entire Internet illegal!

Yes, for most associations, the proper abbreviation is "Assn." However, when talking about the RIAA and MPAA, the proper abbreviation is "Ass." And if there were a "TIAA" and "IIAA" that operated anything like the RIAA/MPAA, then they would also get the "Ass." abbreviation.

Remember, the English language is a living language, and anything is correct and proper as long as enough people use the language that way. So everyone needs to be sure to use the abbreviation "Ass." when talking about the MPAA and RIA

I read an opinion once that the reason the US government is so incompetent and inefficient is because we as Americans expect it to be. Since then I've decided it's kind of true, can you imagine working at a job where people are always blaming you for being inefficient, bad workers and lazy? Who would want to work there? Some people might, but then you get things like this. I am ok with not pirating music, but.........

imagine if your workplace had a policy where if you saw someone downloading music, you had to approach them, then shout, "That is stealing!" Wow. Talk about demoralizing policy. I would feel like an utter tool. I mean, do I have to shout? Can't I at least say it in a soft voice?

When managers start implementing policies like that, it's time to quit. What competent person would want to work for the government if they can work someplace nice? Some, I'm sure, but they are pushing a lot of good people out.

I think you're missing a far larger point. Have you dealt with non-government employees at a large corporation? When is the last time that you got them on the phone right away? And then did it take that one phone call to get stuff sorted out? Or did you have to make other calls? Possibly talk to a supervisor?

The government is inefficient because it's made up of people working at a large institution that can easily pass responsibility to off to someone else. Why bother to make sure that something gets taken care of when no one above you is actually going to check or say, let alone do, anything if you don't get it done. When someone that's supposed to install your new cable line doesn't end up showing up after you wait for several hours and you call and complain, do you think the guy actually gets fired or reprimanded?

imagine if your workplace had a policy where if you saw someone downloading music, you had to approach them, then shout, "That is stealing!" Wow. Talk about demoralizing policy.

If it was a policy of a nongovernment workplace, it would seem to present a cause of action as defamation per se (either because it imputes criminal action to the target or because it impugns the professional character of the target.)

I read an opinion once that the reason the US government is so incompetent and inefficient is because we as Americans expect it to be. Since then I've decided it's kind of true, can you imagine working at a job where people are always blaming you for being inefficient, bad workers and lazy? Who would want to work there?

My sis-in-law works in the Federal court system as a paralegal, basically. Their enormous office building has exactly the minimum legal number of required bathrooms, and one drinking fountain, on the ground floor. When she asked why, she was told that if they put in comfy bathrooms and drinking fountains within a short walking distance of desks, there would be a huge public outcry about how gummint workers had cushy jobs and were too lazy to walk to get a drink -- which is exactly what happened when they DID try and modernize the building. So now she and her coworkers pay out of their pockets to get a Deep Rock water jug once a week. It has to sit on someone's desk, too, because they're not allowed to use floor space for non-governmental property. I'm glad the job pays her reasonably well because it sounds fairly hellish. I have a sink 8 meters from my desk, and our company pays for refrigerators stocked with free drinks, but that's okay because I'm in industry.

Maaaan, I worked at one place -- what the hell, they treated me awfully, Flextronics is the name and they make lots and lots of computers -- that was so bad, people were talking about calling OSHA. Like, racks of PCB's in front of emergency exit doors (not because we were out of space but because people used those to go out and smoke) and a grand total of two bathrooms for Idunnohowmany people on a shift, something like 200 people. Then they decided they needed to cut costs so they stopped janitorial serv

Long in the past when telecommunicatios was a govt monoploy here, many people complained about Telecom workers sitting arounf at times doing nothing. At that stage 90% of repairs in the counrty areas took less than 24 hours.

So we privatised. No one sits around now, and the waiting time is now more than 5 days for repairs.

Every time I hear someone bitching about govt workers this comes to mind.

If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing......of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not. Granted, I do wish that they would convey correct information, and I don't expect government workers to go zombie-like through the day without taking a break now and then, but still, I am glad that rampant goofing off in this particular manner is discouraged.

How is listening to music while you work "goofing off"? I want my government employees to be honest and productive. If they are more productive while listening to music, then by Bob allmighty, I want them to listen to some damn music.

...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not.

Yes, I agree. No one should be allowed to listen to music at work. For that matter, windows should be painted black and I can't see a reason for anyone below a GS7 to go without blinders in the office.

Seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? If I do my job, I should be allowed to select whatever kind of silly thing I want to put on top of my monitor; adjust my chair however I want; and select whatever sort of music I'd like to listen to. Having a "pointy haired bosses must stay out of my way" attitude for "us" and then this kind of oppressive attitude toward anyone who happens to be employed by the U.S. Federal Government is absurd.

In a DoD environment I Tunes, Amazon Downloader, and other legal forms of downloading music are prohibited from being on the systems as being outside the baseline. I can only speak for the Army but the regulation does not consider music in general stealing. Quoting from AR 25-2 page 27 [army.mil]...

(7) Certain activities are never authorized on Army networks. AUPs will include the following minimums asprohibited. These activities include any personal use of Government resources involving: pornography or obscenematerial (adult or child); copyright infringement (such as the sharing of copyright material by means of peer-to-peersoftware); gambling; the transmission of chain letters; unofficial advertising, soliciting, or selling except on authorizedbulletin boards established for such use; or the violation of any statute or regulation.

In short DISA wrote bad flash training on this one scenario. DoD 8500 series and agency specific regulations DO NOT refer to it as stealing.

The company I work for makes CBT courses like what you see here, and the military is one of our clients. We don't get broad open contracts, we have to bid and compete for them, and the scope of work is limited to the CBT that we're creating. The prices the military pays are the same prices that corporations pay (in fact, we even discount the military's price because they've been so consistent in giving us work).

And, finally, I'll add that our company has won several training industry awards (including [especially] for work we've done for the military), and we employ a staff of highly-qualified writers and artists. You can sit there and say the government spends too much money to get sub-par "pieces of crap" without detailing what exactly your "plenty of first-hand experience" is, but quality is all about the vendor. If you choose a good vendor, you get a good product. If you choose a sub-par piece of crap vendor, then you get a sub-par piece of crap product. And this comes from my own experience of working for a government vendor that produces exactly the type of thing you're critiquing (although the CBT in question is not ours).

Sorry if that influences your mod, but I don't think you're as insightful as you would like others to believe.

Yeah, mostly. The training industry has the Brandon Hall Awards (Brandon Hall says that they're the "Oscars of the training industry", of course), plus IEEE awards, Society For Technical Communication awards, etc. Yeah, they don't mean a lot, but it also makes you feel pretty good when you're being presented with the best award you can possibly get for your industry (even though you wouldn't be able to trade it for a free drink).

The last award we got for something I worked on, we submitted our piece to Br

But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our healthcare and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.

I would never suggest something so stupid. Just look at the USPS and the Interstate System. Wonderful examples of utter failure. Imagine if we let private companies build and control our essential infrastructure instead. We'd be so much better off!

You mean that same USPS that is going to have a $7 BILLION deficit this year? Yeah, you can look really efficient and super cool if you can blow through $7B you don't have.

And look, I like the interstate system as much as the next guy, but our state won't stop construction on I-88 because then they'd have to take down the toll booths. And believe me the work is not necessary or helpful. I'm not saying we should let private companies build our roads, but regardless of what it is, IT SUCKS when the government does it. There's an interstate in Washington State that has an exit in DuPont (yes, the city and the company). The state was going to build the exit and charge DuPont for the privilege. DuPont said, 'if we can build it to your specs, can we do it ourselves?' The government said yes and DuPont built it for half the price the state was going to charge them.

As far as health care, there's a lot more to be said about it than just comparing the government's job of doing other things. I don't know what the answer is there. I think that we've lost the 'insurance' aspect of health care. People want their insurance company to pay for everything (why don't we have car insurance cover tuneups?). If people paid for all the little, routine things and had the insurance for catastrophic things (like cancer, or having a limb reattached), then there probably wouldn't be any "crisis". And I think the whole system would probably be in much better health if 64% of American's weren't overweight/obese. Perhaps you shouldn't get insurance if you've caused your own demise through negligence.

I am from Minneapolis. I remember when that bridge fell, I was scared to death. I've got a couple dozen friends who cross that bridge twice a day. Scared the hell out of everybody.

It's not good when a bridge falls down. Bridges shouldn't fall down. But as far as such things go, that bridge went down exactly the way it was designed to, straight down and in big contiguous blocks, and emergency plans were executed promptly, heroically, and correctly. I don't know where you're from, but we get shit done around here. We don't fuck around.

Thirteen people lost their lives that day. That's the largest single tragedy in my city in as long as I can remember. I in no way make light of that loss.

But hundreds of people lived. Hundreds. A bridge full of people in the middle of evening rush. A school bus full of kids. 60 of them. God, I remember watching the news, watching that bus. I'm not a guy easily swayed to emotion, but Jesus Christ, 60 kids. Everyone in this city paced in front of their TV and chewed their nails and prayed for those kids.

And every single one lived. They lived when they could have died. They lived because emergency response and government agencies did their job.

"A state bridge on an Interstate highway over a county river between two banks of a city... we didn't have one problem." -Rocco Forte, city Emergency Preparedness Director

Initially, design and construction was predicted to take a year and a half, and news reports called that hopelessly optimistic. One year and nineteen days worth of seven-day work weeks later, months ahead of schedule, millions of dollars under budget, the new I-35W bridge was opened to the public. It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces of civic engineering in the upper midwest.

Your post is ignorant in the extreme and incredibly offensive not simply to the people that were there that day, but to the literally thousands of municipal, county, state, and federal employees, not to mention private agencies and contractors, whose diligence, civic devotion, and amazing work not only mitigated what could have been an exponentially worse disaster, but as an encore created one of the first truly great pieces of American engineering of the 21st century.

Not to mention that the suggested maintenance on the bridge was delayed because the Republican state administration was cutting costs. If a group of people try to prove that government is ineffective by getting elected and doing their best to make it ineffective, I'm going to consider them biased. It may be true that you can't solve problems by throwing money at them, but you sure can prevent them from being solved by not allocating enough money.

But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our military and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.

Fixed that for ya. Oh wait, still a dumb thing to say...?

The government is a very large and diverse group of people. Some [fema.gov] of those people do legitimately deserve to be criticized, but many [nist.gov], many [usmc.mil], many [fs.fed.us] of them do not. They do their jobs daily and with excellence, often for little compensation.

To infer that the government would be bad at managing health care because of a single instance of idiotic training materials is an example of woefully poor logic...

A lot of the time the police *do* choose to enforce the laws that are convenient, and ignore the others. I'm not saying that a private firm would do it any better, but think and observe a bit more carefully. A government doing it isn't a cure-all either.

FWIW, I strongly support a public health system, but not any old public health system. It would be quite possible to do things worse than the current system. (And I say this after having been left in pain in the emergency room for well over 12 hours. Fo

You see, this is the fundamental flaw of a government that does more than protect against fraud and force. Theres no way to opt out. Theres no way to protest in a meaningful way, sure, march up to Congress with posters but in the end they still throw you in jail if you choose not to support them by paying taxes.

With a private company, they screw you and you can screw them in the bottom line. If the government screws you either have to bend down for more or risk going to jail where they screw you more.

However, businesses also look at how their brands are doing. Just look at the Edsel, while it was owned by Ford, it failed because consumers didn't like it. Similarly, if no one buys Sony CDs because of the rootkit scares, yet people buy, say Sony Cybershot cameras, eventually Sony will stop making CDs but keep making cameras. Sure, you still give money to Sony, but in the end it still will make them stop producing an offending product.

Troll - you lose. iTunes has never been capable of making DRM encumbered copies of CDs. Windows Media Player on the other hand has been capable of it, and in fact that was the default setting for several versions.

All music ripped via iTunes goes into non-DRM'd MP3, AAC, or ALC (Apple Lossless Codec). Any or all of the above formats can also be burned back to CD by iTunes. in fact, even the old DRM'd FairlPlay AAC files from the iTunes Music Store could be burned to CD.

Yeah. That has happened to me with Windows Media Player. Itunes just aggravates me in small ways that aren't worth mentioning. Its not bad, but not the revolutionary piece of software that it was hyped as by my Apple loving friends prior to the windows version.

>Is there an easy way to quit using the government?Sigh. No easy way. After all, all ecologies develop symbiotic parasites, including social ecologies. So, you can move, but unless the local social ecology is sparse, you can't avoid an infection of government. The trick is finding one that's minimally pathological.

Would be all music, or all music except that music which is public domain, freely donated, given away as samples, distributed under a creative commons or similar licence, or prepaid for by some other means?

Where I an employee under this program and a fellow employee found me downloading music I myself had created from my own server the correct response would be for them to yell "That's Stealing!" and publicly embarrass me?

What are you talking about? There is perfect examples of technology here! The lack of a real title in TFA, (unless master_iaa is somehow a real title), the total lack of HTML other than to embed in an ugly-looking flash plugin, the off center-ness of the flash object, everything just screams state of the art!

"Occasionally breathless tone" is an understatement. Take a look at some of the other training material. The whole site has a Reefer Madness tone, as if it was produced by the same person who directed anti-commie films in the 1950s. I wonder if government training material in general has been given the "War On [fill in the blank]" treatment.

I had to take the test, and I laughed as I got that question wrong, but no one cares. They hire a contractor to create a test, it's only reviewed by pointed haired managers, accuracy is optional. Just because it's there doesn't mean it's official belief, just that the agency creating the test put opinions down.

I've worked in the defense industry, with a security clearance, for going on twenty years now, and you have to understand, this kind of stupidity is not at all unusual. On the military side, the security officers are usually MPs (or SPs, for the Air Force) who've been dragooned into doing information security. They aren't stupid (well, most of them aren't), but they also aren't trained for that kind of work--they're supposed to be cops. But "one size fits nobody," so they get assigned by their branch to information protection slots, receive a couple of weeks of Power Point slide training, and then they're placed over engineers and techs whose knowledge of the IT systems runs rings around them. As a result, their response to anything new is hard-wired: "no."

It's even worse on the civilian/contractor side. Security jobs don't pay well, and because you get what you pay for, the dregs of the organization tend to filter down to those positions. What's worse, once there, your average security guy/gal has power over smarter/more competent people for the first time in their careers, and a small but very present minority of them proceed to abuse that power and act arbitrarily, usually out of ignorance, but occasionally out of pure spite. This kind of mindless "training" presentation is what most of them do all day. As you can see, the results are less than impressive.

Whoever they hired to do the voice over for this obviously was having trouble keeping a straight face. The tone is incredibly facetious. Like "I'm saying it, but I really really really think this is utter bullshit."

A coworker went off on me, for no particular reason, about not downloading any music because he would (somehow) get in trouble for it, in case the BSA raided our offices for (again) no particular reason.

I downloaded a pile of public domain/CC music just on principle. Then I decompiled one of his "utilities" in order to remove a gratuitous pause he had added, just for job security. I felt bad about the latter thing, afterwards, but not the former.

Copyright as envisioned by the authors of the US Constitution was written to law as the Copyright Act of 1790 [wikipedia.org].

Under that act protection was 14 years with a 14 year extension available if the copyright holder was still alive and it was renewed.

So... that's what they meant by "for limited times". They wrote it down for us. Under that law all works prior to 1980 would be in the public domain as would many prior to 1994. Every time copyright has been extended those works that would be public domain have been stolen from each of us. THAT'Sstealing.

When I got to http://www.bong-ra.com/ [bong-ra.com] I can download music for free from the artist. How would this be stealing? Unless they mean they might not get as many donation from music lobby groups unless they make the employees think downloading any music is stealing.

According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download.

When I was in the USAF, everyone in our squadron had to complete annual COMPUSEC training in order to retain their network account. Along with all of the other popular security myths, the training included a section where it instructed users to never, EVER install software from a file or disc that hadn't been approved by the network administrator. Now, this would make sense from a security point of view. We don't need bored airmen installing the Trojan Edition of Bejewelled on government computers. What killed me was that the ENTIRE justification for this rule was not to avoid a possible security issue, but rather that doing so might infringe on the software's copyright if a license to use it had not been properly purchased.

In other words, the U.S. military was more concerned about accidental piracy than actual computer security.

It should go without saying that there was never any mention of open source software, but I can sorta forgive them for that since this was a bit before open source became a common idea in I.T.

The flame of the article is based on the phrasing of the general question. If you click the "Learn More" link, it is clear that the warning is about downloading via P2P file sharing networks. The use of P2P networks is a violation of the DOD Information Systems network use. That's the thrust of the training.

It may not be clear from the phrasing in the question, but in the context (i.e., when administered to people who are constantly exposed to DOD Information Systems training and reminders), it will likely be understood by the reader. Chances are, there is likely a prohibition against personal software (including *legal* music downloads) too.

Taken completely out of context and brought to a heightened level of irrational literal interpretation, the summary is accurate. However...........

"According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' The actual question in the slideshow/training abomination is along the lines of your fellow co-worker calls you over and says "look bra, I found a site with free music, lol im leet". There are 4 answers to choose from:

1. I'd rather download the music from home - -email me the link. (I would choose this, and tell my coworker that he could get in trouble doing this at work, anywhere from wasting company time, committing criminal acts at work (if it is actually some sort of pirate site, and lets be honest freely available music is mostly (but not entirely) not worth my time) or at worst inviting security problems into the workplace computer.

2. "Is it safe to download?" Umm, if you have to ask then you don't know already (or have a hunch at least) and are trusting some random Jim Bom on this.

3. "Since we're on our lunch hour, I see no harm. HEre's my thumb drie!" Obviously the wrong answer with the thumb drive part added in for extra obviousness

4. "That's stealing." Ok, so they simplified the answer from "that is probably stealing, who owns the distribution rights to these songs you are getting from this website? If the owners of the publishing rights do not consent to giving away these materials freely then a crime is being committed, otherwise it is ok to access this site but not from work, because of the above reasons".

I took this.....I dont know what you'd call it, class, course, button masher until I get to the print certificate screen, because it was required of me where I work. Most of the info for securing information systems in this presentation is solid and correct for the USER side of things, i.e. things the everday user of a computer on a network can and should do to minimize (not eliminate as that is not possible) security breaches at their particular Department of Defense associated workplace.
Now excuse me, I need to go participate in the lynching of my co-worker that downloaded the newest whatever is popular pop song at work.

I've also completed this requirement (I'm in the Navy) and remember the "downloading music" security scenario. I was just mindlessly clicking through as fast as I could to get to the "Print Certificate" button, but had to pause for that one because there was no correct option to choose. It's actually the only thing I remember from the entire course.

You bring up several valid points and issues that are ripe for discussion on the issue of ownnership of non-tangible things. (Digital information is non-tangible, its existence while being dependent on some sort of physical media for storage is also wholly independent of that physical media, meaning it is not tied to it, it can be moved or copied to other physical media.)

My point is that a discussion like this is way beyond the scope of a mandatory training that has to be done by more than one million peo

I work for DoD. I remember thinking about posting about this the first time I saw it, years ago. The truth is, nobody cares. Everyone where I work has headphones on and is listening to MP3s, either on their portable music players (not all are iPod . . . ) or on their computers. About the last damn thing we need our government security tax dollars being wasted on is a quixotic quest to rid all government assets of "stolen" music.

It does sicken me a bit to see such propaganda bandied about as official government policy, but I figure if you aren't smart enough to know the difference between downloading data you have rights to (by fair use or otherwise) and an honest to goodness security breach, you shouldn't hold a clearance.